The Chinese view of nature : tourism in China's scenic and historic interest areas

Tourism has greatly increased world wide in recent decades, especially in China. Nature-dominated Scenic and Historic Interest Areas, representative of the Chinese philosophy of the 'oneness of nature and human beings', are the most popular tourism destinations in China. Tourism impacts in these areas have been receiving the attention of heritage landscape conservation. Management actions have largely been determined with an emphasis on natural values. This thesis maintains that values relating to nature are socially and culturally constructed, and that they dynamically change through history. By investigating the social and cultural structures underpinning values related to nature, a macro-history method has been applied to explore the traditional Chinese View of nature from traditional Chinese philosophies and landscape cultures. An instrumental case study method has been applied to explore the contemporary Chinese values of nature. The relationships between traditional values and contemporary values have been identified. It was found that the traditional Chinese values still have a profound influence today, although many aspects have been distorted. Historic high culture in natural areas has been replaced by mass tourism culture and Western values. The research also found that today's values are more socially and politically contested. It has been revealed that there are deep social, cultural, economic and political roots underlying heritage conservation management actions. Changing and contested values have been interpreted from these perspectives. The values inherent in the Chinese View of nature, such as holistic philosophical perspectives, sophisticated Chinese landscape languages, and evolving living landscapes, have been identified. The contributions of these values to relevant theories of environmental philosophy, cultural landscape, national park tourism and heritage conservation have been identified by this research. The implications for multi-cultural dialogues in heritage landscape conservation have been addressed